Hoid and the Bead

[LiquidBlue]

Hoid is not an Allomancer.

Okay... maybe he is, but I want to suggest and alternate interpretation of the evidence. In one of the Shallan flashbacks, Hoid seems to be using allomancy. Given that he once obtained a bead of lerasium, it seems logical to assume that he used the bead to become a mistborn.

However, he doesn't need the bead to be able to use allomancy. We know that he has been introduced to the southern scandrialian's metal arts medallions. He could very easily be using one of these medallions when he used the allomancy seen in the book.

Further, there is some evidence from his letter that the bead may still be intact. So I suggest he didn't use the bead to become a mistborn, but that he still has it (probably implanted under his skin). Perhaps he is even using it a a feruchemical metalmind.

[+Extesian]

Certainly can't rule out some of what you've suggested but we do know he's an allomancer now, from two recent WoBs

Quote

QuESTION

Can you share any abilities that Hoid has accrued so far in the books, has he-- I can't even pronounce the L-word...

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, lerasium, he is indeed an Allomancer. That has happened. I haven't confirmed much else, but he does have that.

Quote

QUESTION

When Hoid took the bead of Lerasium, did he actually eat it or did he just hang on to it?

BRANDON SANDERSON

You have seen him use Allomancy in other books, so… that’s your answer.

 

[LiquidBlue]

I was thinking about the passage where Hoid references the element, and if it was the bead, it seemed to indicate that it was intact. This lead me down this path. Thanks for the WoBs.

[Yezrien]

The wording on those WoBs is deliberately vague. He confirms that Hoid has burned lerasium, but he never explicitly states that Hoid no longer has lerasium. Which seems to suggest (and I'm sure this has been theorized in another thread) that he ate some of the bead, but not all of it. Like, maybe he ate half of it, and became a regular-strength mistborn, and embedded the other half in his skin somewhere (as the letter suggests). Possibly as a metalmind.

[+Extesian]

6 minutes ago, LiquidBlue said:

I was thinking about the passage where Hoid references the element, and if it was the bead, it seemed to indicate that it was intact. This lead me down this path. Thanks for the WoBs.

There's quite a good discussion here about it. I'm interested in the idea that he's using small amounts at a time to make lerasium alloys which make you a misting of the element you alloy it with. We've seen him use allomancy but it doesn't mean he's mistborn.

[The One Who Connects]

1 minute ago, Belzedar said:

Like, maybe he ate half of it, and became a regular-strength mistborn, and embedded the other half in his skin somewhere (as the letter suggests). Possibly as a metalmind.

Given the third Hoid/Allomancy related WoB that he "did things to get people to react a certain way" or similar wording, he may have alloyed some of it for specific powers. I do like the idea of him being a somewhat-weaker Mistborn though. I don't think anyone's suggested that specific scenario before

[Jofwu]

But why would you bother with that if you could just be a Mistborn and be done with it?

[The One Who Connects]

8 minutes ago, jofwu said:

But why would you bother with that if you could just be a Mistborn and be done with it?

Because doing stuff that isn't necessarily the "logical choice" seems like a facet of Hoid's MO
On a more realistic note, alloying for a specific power would probably make that power stronger than it would be as 1 of 16 as a full Mistborn with the same amount of Lerasium. It's all based on what powers Hoid considers useful for his purposes.

[+Extesian]

14 minutes ago, jofwu said:

But why would you bother with that if you could just be a Mistborn and be done with it?

Because that makes one person mistborn but if you alloy it you can make multiple mistings. He may not need all the powers but has plans to make other critical people mistings. Or maybe he wants to use some of it in feruchemy or even hemalurgy.

Btw I don't think that's the case, but there are reasons he'd want to ration it very carefully.

Edit - @The One Who Connects that's the second time in this thread we've posted very similar responses at almost exactly the same time

Edited February 24, 2017 by Extesian

[Mason Wheeler]

On a related note, do we have any WoB as to which metal he was using in the Shallan flashback?  To "make people respond to him" it had to have been either Zinc or Brass, and looking back at that scene I could see a good case for either one, either Soothing Shallan's father and dampening his infamous temper, or Rioting Shallan afterwards when he was speaking to her alone and trying to get her to realize/admit she's a proto-Radiant.

[Landis963]

5 hours ago, Mason Wheeler said:

On a related note, do we have any WoB as to which metal he was using in the Shallan flashback?  To "make people respond to him" it had to have been either Zinc or Brass, and looking back at that scene I could see a good case for either one, either Soothing Shallan's father and dampening his infamous temper, or Rioting Shallan afterwards when he was speaking to her alone and trying to get her to realize/admit she's a proto-Radiant.

He could also have been Rioting Lin's fear of making a scene, or anything that would hasten the end of the conversation without physical aggression.  (Because after seeing Shallan, he didn't care about Lin anymore)

[Weltall]

It probably doesn't matter too much whether Hoid was using zinc or brass as we know that you can get pretty much identical effects with both metals. Whether you Riot the emotion you want or you Soothe all the emotions you don't want, you get more or less the same end result. Hoid could make either work for him.

14 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

On a more realistic note, alloying for a specific power would probably make that power stronger than it would be as 1 of 16 as a full Mistborn with the same amount of Lerasium. It's all based on what powers Hoid considers useful for his purposes.

Yeah, Hoid already has a ridiculous powerset so he might not necessarily feel he needs every Allomantic power in order to accomplish his goals. If he wants only one or two powers, it might make more sense for him to use a lerasium alloy to give them to himself at a high level and then reserve the rest of the bead for other purposes. For example, he doesn't need Bloodmaker powers and given his apparent inability to harm people, he wouldn't derive the full benefit of being a Thug or Coinshot.

Given that it's implied you could do all sorts of spiritweb rewriting with the metal if you knew how, he's probably got an incentive to keep some of it around for testing if nothing else.

[Hawkido]

Perhaps I am just way off base, but I thought the element that Hoid was protecting was the black sphere that Szeth got from from King Gavilar.  I believe Szeth said he hid it, and implied that he hid it in Urithiru, but that pretty much means Hoid has it, as you really cannot hide anything from Hoid.  Hoid probably had it minutes after Szeth left it in Urithiru.  This might have something to do with reviveing dead spren or might be part of Honor.  It might be Tanavastium.  But I don't believe that it is the bead of Lerasium that Hoid is talking about in the Letter (unless there is a WoB stating otherwise that I have missed).  That being said, let's say he is alloying the Lerasium... who says he always has to alloy it with a mistborn metal... what if some of it was alloyed with whatever that blacksphere was?  or perhaps some other planets investiture that cannot be simply picked up, unlike Breath, which is relativly easy for a world hopper to acquire via trading.  I don't know that a spren would bond with Hoid as he doesn't have Honor or cultivation "in his heart", and Odium doesn't seem like he likes Hoid too much.

Edited March 1, 2017 by Hawkido
Crouching Typo, Hidden Bad Grammar.

[Mason Wheeler]

11 hours ago, Hawkido said:

It might be Tanavastium.  But I don't believe that it is the bead of Lerasium that Hoid is talking about in the Letter (unless there is a WoB stating otherwise that I have missed).  That being said, let's say he is alloying the Lerasium... who says he always has to alloy it with a mistborn metal... what if some of it was alloyed with whatever that blacksphere was?

Now that would be interesting!  Gather a bit of the god-metals of all 16 shards, alloy them together, and you have a bead of... well... of Adonalsium.

I wonder what you could do with that...

[Jondesu]

11 hours ago, Hawkido said:

But I don't believe that it is the bead of Lerasium that Hoid is talking about in the Letter (unless there is a WoB stating otherwise that I have missed).

I was thinking we had a WoB stating that, but I'm actually not completely sure.  I'll have to see if I can find it, although there are others who are far better at finding WoBs. EDIT: Coppermind only says that "the element" in the letter could refer to that, but has no referenced WoB saying it definitely is.

Edited March 1, 2017 by Jondesu

[Hawkido]

42 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

Now that would be interesting!  Gather a bit of the god-metals of all 16 shards, alloy them together, and you have a bead of... well... of Adonalsium.

I wonder what you could do with that...

Hmm might have also answered one of my questions about what happened to one of Bleeder's spikes, Hoid has it in his pocket of many things.  Assuming it is a blend of Odium/Autonomy godmetals.

Edited March 1, 2017 by Hawkido

[Jofwu]

I've never been fond of the idea that it's Lerasium. Is there a WoB about it? I think whatever it is will be more directly involved with Stormlight Archive itself. Perhaps the Letter is JUST cosmere fan service... But I'm inclined to believe it's more meaningful in the Stormlight context than we might think. I like the Tanavastium idea.

[Pagerunner]

The reference to an 'element' leads people to think in terms of chemical elements, the Periodic Table and all that good stuff, which has only been relevant thus far in Mistborn. Add that to something Hoid is protecting, at the time WoK was published we only knew Hoid had the bead (no confirmation of Breath until perfect pitch in WoR, no inkling he was trying to become an Elantrian until the 2015 10th anniversary edition bonus scene, no Moon Scepter until Emperor's Soul a few years later), so it was really the only thing we knew of his that would need protecting.

A similar thing happened in WoR when the Second Letter talked about a dead gemstone. All we have publically available that it could possibly be referring to was in the Liar of Partinel sample chapters that were released, where Midius had an Aether that looked very much like a gemstone. But, bits and pieces of Dragonsteel are slipping out, and we know Hoid went by the name Topaz in that story. So, we can refine our assumptions that the Second Letter was talking about Hoid's old Aether, and now see that it's talking about his old alias of Topaz.

So, yeah, there's a lot in these Letters that relate to things we haven't seen, stuff from unpublished stories or even things that haven't ever left the planning stages. If we assume that we can know what the element is, then lerasium seems to be the leading idea (an element, he ingested it so he protects it like his own body), especially if we travel back in time to when WoK was first released and this idea originated. If we assume that it's something from Dragonsteel that we haven't seen (what is dragonsteel, anyways?), then it really could be anything.

[Mason Wheeler]

1 hour ago, Pagerunner said:

what is dragonsteel, anyways?

I haven't had the opportunity to read the book, but given that the Liar of Partinel, set on the same world, takes place in a Bronze Age civilization, I would guess that dragonsteel is exactly what it sounds like: a near-miraculous metal of great strength that can only be forged by the powerful flames of dragon breath.

[Pagerunner]

29 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

I haven't had the opportunity to read the book, but given that the Liar of Partinel, set on the same world, takes place in a Bronze Age civilization, I would guess that dragonsteel is exactly what it sounds like: a near-miraculous metal of great strength that can only be forged by the powerful flames of dragon breath.

The question as somewhat rhetorical, just suggesting that the element Hoid protects might be some dragonsteel itself, and the specifics aren't evident to those of us who haven't read Dragonsteel. We know that in the Shattered Plains sequence in Dragonsteel Prime, they were fighting over dragonsteel wells, not gemharts. (Side note, is it possible that dragonsteel is a god metal? Sounds suspiciously like atium forming at geodes...)

[Spoolofwhool]

1 minute ago, Pagerunner said:

(Side note, is it possible that dragonsteel is a god metal? Sounds suspiciously like atium forming at geodes...)

Sounds more like that's where he adapted the idea of the atium geodes from.

[Mason Wheeler]

33 minutes ago, Pagerunner said:

We know that in the Shattered Plains sequence in Dragonsteel Prime, they were fighting over dragonsteel wells, not gemharts.

I actually didn't know that.  Source?

[Weltall]

2 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

(what is dragonsteel, anyways?)

Valyrian Steel? Or the name of an Epic who's a big fan of ASoIaF, thus providing evidence that Reckoners is a Cosmere work after all? xD

[Pagerunner]

9 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

I actually didn't know that.  Source?

Huh. I can't find where I learned about dragonsteel wells; maybe I imagined it. At the very least, there weren't gemhearts; chasmfiends were designed by Ben when Brandon was revamping WoK.

[The One Who Connects]

19 hours ago, Hawkido said:

I believe Szeth said he hid it, and implied that he hid it in Urithiru, but that pretty much means Hoid has it, as you really cannot hide anything from Hoid.

Technical nitpick, but last I looked, he left it in Jah Keved.

20 hours ago, Hawkido said:

who says he always has to alloy it with a mistborn metal... what if some of it was alloyed with whatever that blacksphere was?

Well, the "he is indeed an Allomancer" would be what says he had to alloy it with a Mistborn metal, but we've assumed at least twice that he didn't use all of it... Also, given the definition of alloying, I'm not sure it would work with the sphere.